How 'bout that king that put his sons, one each, into the holes for the gateposts of the city? That seemed a little on the barbaric side to me.
BUT THE BIGGIE for me was when I discovered that after all the hoopla surrounding the priests of Jehovah, and the sub-priests and the holy, and the most holy, and the holy of holies and all that jazz, that the will of god was determined by the high priests playing with ROCKS. The Urim and Thumin. Call 'em what you want, but they were still rocks. Imagine that, the will of the existential, infinite god being determined by playing with rocks!! And only TWO at that. At least there were multiple rune stones and so you'd think that messages from god would be more subtle via using many rocks instead of only two.
It stands to reason that if you only have two rocks to determine the will of god, that the method of that determination would have to be by via inquiry, right? As in: Shall we attack the Hittites this afternoon and lay them waste and smote them with the sword so that they all die right down to the old men and the little children still at suck and we take possession of their city and we bring back bushels and bushels of those foreskins you like so much and put them on a fire so that the smell of their burning makes a restful odor in your nostrils (we think that's a waste. IF we made you a wallet of the foreskins, all you would have to do then would be to rub the wallet and it would turn into a three-suiter, but hey, if you want to waste them like that, they're YOUR foreskins). And then they roll the Urim and Thumin and it comes up bad news for the Hittites. I mean what other way IS there with only two rock.
That thing about the Urim and Thumin was very unsettleing to me, very. The will of god determined by playing dice haruuumpth.
francois